Alexa Reaches For The Next Level of IoT
Amazon has made no secret of its ambitions for the Internet of Things (IoT). Alexa is meant to lock users into the Amazon ecosystem – providing access to products, services and command/control functions. Buy Amazon. Consume Amazon. Use Amazon. And the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) might just be Amazon Alexa’s watershed moment. For example, Amazon’s partnership with LG, the appliance makers, has born fruit. The company released the LG Hub, a home robot with personality that runs WiFi enabled household gadgets with Alexa. Also widely-publicized was LG’s smart refrigerator – the LG Smart Instaview – which includes an ice maker that runs fully on Alexa. (Quipped a nearby friend: Does the fridge come with the robot? Or do you have to get up to get the ice for yourself?) The refrigerator also delivers live photos of its contents in case you forgot to take your own photos before leaving the house. It’s like having a giant Echo in the kitchen. Summing up, The Guardian writes:
The annual tech trade show seems less about real innovation breakthroughs solving unmet needs and more about incrementally improved nice-to-haves for the 1%.
“CES 2018: less ‘whoa’, more ‘no!’ – tech fails to learn from its mistakes at annual pageant” 01/10/18
Of course, Amazon did make good on its plans with Microsoft to equip PCs with Alexa-enabled Windows 10. ASUS, HP and Acer all released PCs which integrate Cortana and Alexa. And the LG Smart is just the latest LG Alexa-enabled refrigerator. But LG is working with Google, too. The South Korean company announced late last year its plan to partner with Google on its SmartQ speakers which will enable consumers to control all sorts of SmartThinQ products – refrigerators, air purifiers, robot vacuum cleaners, etc. – with Google Assistant.
We heard very little about (or by) the independent development community, although its fingerprints were all over the latest product offerings. Even as hardware manufacturers invest in internal software development talent, they have been quietly relying on independents to close the gap. Sub (sub-sub and sub-sub-sub) contracting were rife again this year. The voice-enablement industry held hourly rates held firm as Big fish took their cut.
And for the purists among the developers of Alexa Skills and Google Agents, we noted that most are accepting the contracts while wondering when stand alone software will get its due. What we’d like to see are the hard numbers on what drives new voice assistant usage and product uptake. What makes a voice assistant platform addictive? A must-have? Is the growth coming in increments or tranches? Where are the missed opportunities? What else is there besides music and weather? When do consumers spend hours a day on voice assistant platforms?
More Thought Questions:
Who’s buying into voice assistant platforms? What’s the consumer uptake? And for business? Why are manufacturers and software developers investing in these platforms? What’s the payback structure? What does a $700 billion company (or an $800 billion one) have to gain or lose? Is push ecosystem-building paying off? Where do independent developers stand? Who is sharing information and resources? Who will harness their capacities?
